European migration. The brain-drain cycle

Europe's commendable migration from east to west

THE Oxford Belfry is a typical modern British hotel: big, bland and strikingly lacking in native staff. Among the multinational workforce, the cheerful, omnipresent Poles stand out: at the front desk, in the bars and restaurants, cleaning and (while reading an economics textbook) supervising the gym and pool.

"It's the work ethic. Many British people think the service industries are about servitude," complains John Cotter, a senior manager. Since Poland joined the European Union last year, his staffing headaches have largely been over. "We are inundated with applications from Poland," he says. Indeed, the new reservoir of good, cheap labour is a boon for many employers in Britain, Ireland and Sweden, the only old EU countries that have fully opened their doors to workers from the new members. But now some central European countries, especially Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, are worried that too many of their best people are leaving for higher pay and a better life.

Big migrations in Europe are not new. After the collapse of communism, millions moved abroad for political reasons: Jews to Israel, ethnic Germans home from the Soviet Union, Russians back to Russia. Others were refugees from wars, or migrated illegally. But, says Ali Mansoor, a World Bank economist working on a study of post-communist migration due to be published next year, this one is different: driven by economics not politics, and largely legal not illegal.

One of his biggest problems is measuring the scale of the new migration. Official statistics underestimate the numbers, perhaps hugely. In Britain, where central Europeans are supposed to register before seeking work, but often do not, there are (supposedly) only 95 Polish plumbers. A tabloid newspaper managed to find that many in a day, using a postcard-sized advertisement in a Polish-populated part of west London. The total number of workers registered in Britain from the new members is supposedly only around 175,000. But by some accounts, there are 300,000 Poles alone (and another 100,000 in Ireland). Latvian officials think at least 50,000 people, or 2% of the population, have gone abroad to work; Lithuania estimates more than 100,000, or 3%.

These departures leave labour-thirsty industries such as construction and retailing short of workers at home. Either they must import labour from farther east, or they must raise wages. Some poor rural regions are visibly depopulated, with so many adults gone that children and old folk feel abandoned.

Yet most of the moans are overdone. For a start, the era of migration is likely to be temporary. "We have ten years before the demographics kick in," says Mr Mansoor, "after which there just won't be the young people to emigrate." That is not wholly good news: most central and east European countries face the nasty combination of a rich-country age structure with a poor-country economy. But it highlights the biggest cause of migration now: a big pool of unemployed, underpaid or under-appreciated people for whom going abroad makes a lot of sense.

If pay and prospects in a Latvian village are dismal, it is probably better to pick mushrooms in Ireland (a popular choice), at least for a while. It is drudgery, but it brings cash, and the chance of something better, either abroad or at home. "You have to look at the whole life-cycle," argues Willem Buiter, a former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), who is now at the London School of Economics. "Young migrants pick up skills, networks and funds."

Brain drains can aggravate a bad situation, with so many people leaving a poor country that its problems worsen. But central and eastern Europe is a long way from that. For a start, returning home is cheap and quick. Booked in advance, budget flights between Britain and Poland can cost just a few pounds. That makes migration more efficient: people can choose easily how long they go for, and where.

Second, the new EU members are well placed to be a "brain factory". Migration sends a signal that should - if education and training are working properly - stimulate greater supply of the skills that the outside world wants. The big demand for Polish bus drivers in Britain offers an obvious incentive for Poles with related skills (driving lorries, for example) to adapt.

Third, there are plenty of brains to drain - up to twice as many doctors per head of population, for example, as most developed countries think necessary, says Libor Krkoska of the EBRD. The collapsing birthrate means there are plenty of spare teachers too.

Migration could, however, be made more efficient. Heikki Mattila, of the International Organisation for Migration's Budapest office, highlights "brain waste": well educated migrants doing menial jobs because their qualifications are not recognised. Despite EU rules, this happens all too often. Tony Venables of European Citizen Action Service, a Brussels think-tank, argues that complex (and often illegal) barriers that such countries as France and Italy put in the way of migrants encourage abuse and bad practice.

For the countries that export brains, there are two big challenges. One is to consider why people are leaving. Low pay in the public sector is one reason; rigid or corrupt institutions may be another. Revealingly, many central Europeans say they are especially attracted by the relatively flexible and unbureaucratic British way of life - such as a one-page quarterly tax return for small firms. Mr Mansoor's work highlights the link between emigration and the quality of life in the source countries. "The demand is known and given. The difference is in the countries that supply it," he says.

The second task is to make returning home a case of "when" rather than "if", by removing bureaucratic obstacles and maintaining ties between diasporas and the homeland. The authorities in Vilnius hope that sponsoring new Lithuanian-language schools in places like Dublin will remove a barrier for emigre families who are considering returning: keeping children's language skills honed makes parents less worried about disrupting their education if they go back.

For money isn't everything. Mantas Adomenas, a star Lithuanian classical scholar, studied at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1990s, writing a doctorate on "Plato's reception of the pre-Socratic philosophers". But after eight years as a Cambridge don, he went home, taking a 75% pay cut to teach at Vilnius University and campaign against corruption. His friends, he says, chide him as a big fish in a small pond. He responds by quoting Plutarch, who 20 centuries ago refused to join the brain drain to Athens "lest my small city should become even smaller."

Feature discusses the implications - positive and negative - of migration of people to work from eastern (new) to western (old) Europe. Overall, the article suggests, the benefits outweigh the disbenefits.